


Do Robots Dream of [SYSTEM ERROR]

by twofoldAxiom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Cyberpunk, Gay Robots, Killer Robots, M/M, Memory Alteration, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-War, Tags Contain Spoilers, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 07:49:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14588394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: Unit 626262 was set to be decommissioned and stripped down for raw material.You woke up instead, with a face, a voice, and a half-broken body and mind, dragging your sorry self to the smoggy outskirts of the Houston Four sprawl.What now?





	Do Robots Dream of [SYSTEM ERROR]

**Author's Note:**

> Help me everyone, I'm back on my bullshit.
> 
> Starting this story was completely unplanned and I only have the barest idea of where I'm going, but it's gonna involve plenty of references to a bunch of movies and games that other people have seen and told me about, probably.
> 
> Wish me luck!

Top brass gave the orders directly: All primaries- red, yellow, and blue units- are to be decommissioned and wiped, harvested for raw material, and used in building civilian chassis for secondaries. It was a nightmare getting just that, and it was understood almost unanimously that not all of you were going to make it out of this alive, and that this was a sacrifice you should be honored to make for your newborn brethren in the new dawn of true artificial intelligence. Secondary-hued units, later models of the Skaia Corporation's Paramilitary Automated Response Project, were deemed the likeliest to assimilate into society properly. Most of them were medical units, after all, though you'd never seen a purple, violet, or pink in the repair tents.

Doesn't really matter, not right now, and it's going to matter a lot less in about twenty minutes. You, serial number 626262, don't have as much going for you.

You were faulty to begin with. You had no chance to be transferred from your original body to a civilian chassis. That's why you're here, waiting to be disassembled and thinking about what a pain it is that you developed actual sapience only a couple months before the end of the Grey War. It would have been kinder, you think, if you couldn't think at all: If you just responded to stimuli in the field, recalled names and orders, and did as you were told without a hitch. You're a machine, after all.

You couldn't even get that part right.

Other units, varying shades from bright red, like you, to dull indigo, mill around the warehouse too. Some of them are, like you, sulking for the sake of sulking. It's not like you have much to lose like this, all you remember is dragging people out of wreckage or shooting at anyone who isn't wearing the literal QR code for "Not A Target" on their helmet. When people realized you were making too many decisions that didn't line up with your original programming, that really, lots of others were doing that, well.

That's kind of how you got here, isn't it?

That's how you ended up glaring spitefully at a nearby orange that doesn't even have the fucking capacity to understand why you're glaring at it like an enemy combatant might. It looks at you blankly, obviously scanning you but unable to make sense of the data and therefore unable to act. Your serial ID is stamped into your faceplate, 6's and 2's in dots and dashes repeated on an almost microscopic level. You shouldn't be looking at it with something approaching hatred. You shouldn't be  _able_ to.

Had you known what envy was at the time, you would immediately place the feeling gripping your internal circuitry as just that. 

You look away as someone walks in, you hear heels clicking, echoing, on the catwalk along the wall; it takes you half a millisecond over half a second, too slow for an AR unit and your internal clock makes sure you know it, but you look at her and recognize her face from your personnel records and the QR code disguised as a fancy brooch on her lapel. Mina Crocker herself, CEO of Crocker Corp, tailed by a couple suits you don't even bother looking at but internally name anyway; Joshua Turner and Maria Campbell. You don't have the auditory sensitivity to make out words, but you have just enough to tell they're talking, and you don't think any of them up there are talking about how you've suddenly gained rights as people and maybe some compensation for your issues besides.

Hah. That's funny. You know what funny is at least, from the dying human comrades you've had to euthanize yourself. It's easier to recollect the times when they were whole, not looking at you like you might save them from their ruined, bullet-riddled flesh giving out under them. Real fucking riot, that.

You pick up movement. Lack of movement above, lots of movement below; the three of them watch the proceedings where you're being separated into groups, probably to test for defects and how much money they can save by letting you out there as is, rather than scrapping you and starting over. You're in the very back of the left side of the warehouse, behind a hulking blue that almost blocks everything out.

Somewhere in what you might call a soul if you were sentimental, you consider running. Programming dictates you don't leave your post, and it's a struggle to even move your arm past programming most days, but now you can at least wiggle a finger at it and tell it you think it sucks. You love thinking. There's a lot of fun in thinking, especially in the bits where you can be spiteful and smug. You hate where it's brought you, though, in that you're aware that you won't be doing much of it afterwards, and your newfound self-preservation algorithms are making you overheat as they clash with your safety locks.

Somehow you move forward. Scanners at the front of every row pass horizontally at about head-level for each unit; then they're segregated behind those scanners in groups again, left and right. You lose time just looking around, fifteen seconds to be exact, and then you're in front of the scanner, which reads the information printed in raised dots on you in a light like a magnesium flare. 

You don't look away, though, and then it's gone, and you get your new assignment slotted into your central processor, the old one blurred out so fast you don't even have time to watch it disappear. In the next twenty four hours, it'll be gone entirely. Not even a feeling of losing something.

Or maybe it'll take less time than that. Your new assignment is to be wiped, after all.

At least the fucking orange unit isn't anywhere to be seen right now. Smug, there we go, that feels a lot better. It's hard, but you hold onto it as your field of vision goes blank, and then there's not really anything to hold onto at all.

~!~

It's been an unknown amount of time after you blacked out. You don't have an internal clock anymore, the sense of missing it so alien to you that you don't even understand what missing it is. But you stumble outside a smoking wreck of what used to be some kind of building, with a face. 

Your face. You have a face, now.

You've been given a name to go with it, and skin to go over the cables and hinges that once made up your body. You have nerves, and you can feel the smoggy heat of the outside world bearing down on you like never before. You also feel pain, for the first time in your short life, and you've decided you really don't fucking like it.

You don't know what happened, exactly, because you were deactivated for the memory wipe, and when you went back online you looked down at yourself and found something almost human. Pigmentless grey silicone, and it looks too thin in places, hastily poured over you, but almost. Almost.

There's a scraped patch on your palm where you'd skidded across the ground. Exposed wiring above your hip, a massive hole in your temple that betrays you for what you are, sparks occasionally disturbing your vision with glitches and blue nothing. You don't know what's happening in the slightest, and you don't know what went wrong. Weren't you supposed to be decommissioned? Weren't you supposed to be taken apart?

Weren't you supposed to forget that you were going to die?

You can't focus. Too many things are happening at once, and your central processing core is going to overheat if you keep pushing it like that. One thing at a time, close down everything else until you can get to it. You move forward. That's simple enough. You repeat the command, finish it one more time before repeating it again, over and over until you have some semblance of walking or limping going on. Moving forward all the same. Moving forward.

Lights gleam up ahead, blurred by the smog. Smoke-blackened buildings. People, scared and huddled together, backlit by fluorescent bulbs as you pass. But you can only register them for milliseconds at a time, before you have to shift to something else- the ground, the pain, the way your knees keep trying to give out under you as you move. You make a turn and find nothing. You make another turn and continue on. You keep making fucking turns and you're lost, you're fucking lost, you don't have any directions, maps, commands, or orders. You don't even have time.

You might also be a little scared, now.

Someone stops you. Quick scan doesn't show any affiliations, enemy or ally, though you don't expect any. Grease stains all over their hair and hands. Pale skin, red eyes like a house android but no codes written in the irises. Human, male. He breathes out like he was trying to stay as still as you, and you check your clock again, or you try, forgetting that it isn't there. Everything feels off-kilter, like you've moved your perceptions slightly too far to the right of your head.

Well, he also isn't really trying to stop you, he's just standing in front of you. You consider, slowly, too slowly for even a red like you- and there, you remember that too, your model hue, your unit number, but that doesn't make any sense- just going back.

Not that there's anything for you if you go back. Not that any part of you will be left if you do, judging by the gaping hole above your hip, in your head; your scraped hands and bad eye. Flickers of grey and muted color streak across your vision. Your new face probably doesn't look very well put-together right now. He looks you over, hundreds of seconds too slowly, wipes his hands on his thighs as if that'll get any of the filth off. Looks over his shoulder.

He looks up and gestures for you to follow him, and stops you with a hand on your chest when you come a little too close. "Easy, man, I just don't think you should be getting any of that fancy wiring wet. You're from out of town, I'm guessing?" He sounds a little like a couple of the soldiers you knew. Younger, a little raspy, but mostly the same, probably around the same age as most of them were, then. You nod. He nods back, and you feel a trickle of something down your back, greasy and warm. More of it comes down and he tugs you closer under the galvanized iron eaves overhead.

He rubs the back of his head before stepping away from you again. "Yeah, you should uh. You should get going to wherever it was you were so determined to go like a second ago. Maybe after the rain stops, though, and I'm kind of curious what the fuck is going on here, so."

He's meandering a lot more than you're used to from, well, anyone or anything. Back at the old base, before you were decommissioned- and you shouldn't be able to remember that, either- words were pretty sparse. He keeps going like if he stops he'll never speak again. You do your best imitation of a cough, pulling your shoulders up, a hand near your mouth. You're very surprised when you make a sound that's almost a cough, and he looks more surprised than you do.

"Right, right. Wanna come in? I can probably fix your. Whatever that is, if I get a better look at it." He gestures to your hip, at the hole with an exposed servomotor and a bunch of frayed copper thread. A minute ago you could have ignored it, but now everything from the hip down feels like it's going to fall off. You nod again, a spark goes off in the hole in your head, and you lose depth perception entirely. He winces. Whistles. Bites his lip.

"Okay then. New orders, if you still follow those. Come with me, we'll get that looked at. I'm Dave, my brother Dirk's probably in the garage, we'll figure something out. Don't think I've seen an android walking around alone before."

Is that what you are now? Seems to be so.

"What's your name, by the way? You have one, right?" He asks. He keeps walking, slowly so you can limp behind him. Your good eye- you feel around to make sure you still have a good eye instead of a flat panel of plexiglass with a pair of cameras behind it, feel a useless nose and a pair of lips, that's probably how you made that noise earlier; you didn't think it was more than an aesthetic choice, huh- your good eye wanders a bit before focusing on the back of his head. Rain hits the grimy street with a sound that almost fools you into thinking it's static. You used to be able to cut it out in your sensors. He coughs into his hand like you did earlier. "I could give you one if you need it."

"I'm not that kind of machine." You say. Your voice definitely has static in it, it glitches a little at the end and you don't think it was installed properly, then. "I'm... Karkat. I'm..."

It's gone.

You can't remember your unit number. Maybe it was never there to begin with. You frown, but he ignores it, and the unfinished sentence at the end there.

"Cool, cool. Yeah. Not the first lost android I've had to work with, though usually y'all don't come limping here on your own. Anyone own you?" You shake your head. He pauses, then shrugs. "That was dumb, ignore that. Okay. We gotta check how much of a battery you've got left and if we can replace it or juice it up." He's off somewhere else, even as he presses his hand to a panel in the wall and the garage door you find yourself in front of moves. Light floods out, yellowy and bright, shot through with shadows from inside. Bits of machinery lie across tables or in boxes. A crackly, oversaturated holodisplay plays on the wall, an advertisement for something in a can called Crackle. He plants his hands on his hips and breathes in. "You sit over there and I'll see if I can find some identification on you, yeah?"

You look over your shoulder, at the dark buildings, the figures huddled in doorways, the grayish rain coming down. Then the garage door closes, rattling all the way down.

"Yeah." You answer back, still looking at the closed door like you might see through it. Something in you knows he won't find a thing.


End file.
